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How 98 Buck Social Partnered with WordStream to Increase Conversions by 400%

If you run an agency or work at one, you likely know the value of hard work. Agencies are basically small powerhouses trying to do it all for every client. Juggling multiple relationships and delivering quality results simultaneously can be challenging to say the least. 98 Buck Social founder and CEO Chris Heuwetter knows this all too well.

98 Buck Social is a startup marketing agency located in sunny South Florida, which places an emphasis on delivering quality social media services at a fraction of the cost compared to the market standard. “We don’t cut corners to do this either,” Chris said. “Our entire team is full-time, and comes into the office five days a week.”

As the head honcho at 98 Buck, Chris wears quite a few hats across his 12-person company. From managing the operations, account, and sales teams, as well as handling 100% of the marketing and advertising efforts, his workload would be considered the complete opposite of light.

The Challenge: Increasing Spend without Seeing Results

Aside from the challenges of managing a large portfolio of clients with a very small, though dedicated team, Chris found that one of his key digital marketing strategies wasn’t performing quite the way he wanted.

“AdWords has been a cornerstone of our marketing strategy since we launched three years ago,” said Chris. “We started with a small $500/month budget, and after two years we noticed that even though we were increasing our spend as we grew, the results of the campaigns weren’t improving much.”

Taking the Plunge with WordStream

This is when Chris and his team began the hunt for some outside assistance. AdWords was a critical part of their own lead generation strategy, so ensuring that their account is run optimally is critical for their bottom line.

After extensively researching consultants and various software companies, Chris decided that WordStream Advisor would be his platform of choice. “WordStream made a great impression on us, and within 30 days we were able to see great results.”

The other leading factor that led Chris to choose WordStream over other options was the fact that he’d be able to learn from the platform, while maintaining control of his AdWords campaigns.

“I'm in digital marketing, just not an AdWords expert. I'd much rather learn and do it myself than pay a consultant who I'm not sure would be managing it to the level I would,” Chris said. “WordStream delivered on exactly what I wanted to do: Learn AdWords management effectively and productively, under the watchful eye of an expert.”

Chris and his team truly care about their clients, so having this granular control to ensure they’re delivering results was a critical component when making the decision to go with WordStream Advisor.

Cleaning Things Up with WordStream’s Help

So where to start? Chris was happy not to have to spend hours watching tutorials and learning solely on his own. The fact that WordStream training was included, with additional time with a consultant for a small premium, made it easy to get things running on the most efficient note.

“This is one of the main sale points for me. I'm not a fan of watching webinars and videos,” says Chris. “I'm happy to pay a premium to have an expert teach me and give me guidance. We were able to cut out the fat and optimize our spend thanks to the fantastic consulting and guidance from our WordStream rep.”

Tweaking 98 Buck’s AdWords Workflow

Chris already has a system down when it comes to managing his clients’ digital campaigns, which revolves around revenue, monthly goals, and working off of metrics from the previous two months. “We mainly look at lead flow and conversions. We want our lead flow increasing in a positive correlation to our ad spend and optimization process. We’re a high-volume agency so lead flow is everything to us.”

Luckily, WordStream Advisor allowed Chris and his team to do just that. Not only did the tools save them time, but they drastically improved their AdWords workflows. “We learned how to stay on top of all our ad campaigns, build out ad groups, build new creatives regularly, add new powerful keywords, and more importantly set up negatives to prevent low-quality clicks and leads.”

Chris’s favorite tool within the WordStream Advisor platform is easily the 20-Minute Work Week. This powerful tool allows Chris to navigate through the weekly alerts for each account to address any critical areas first.

“We stay up to date with the 20-Minute Work Week, and then use our bi-weekly calls with our WordStream consultant to tackle higher level campaign strategy and work down from there. I love the 20-Minute Work Week!”

Saving Time and Money and Seeing RESULTS!

Last, but certainly not least, the 98 Buck Social team is most pleased with WordStream Advisor for its ability to not only save their agency time and money, but help deliver outstanding results for their valued clients.

“WordStream has saved us time AND money – certainly time by keeping us focused and bringing us through the regular tasks that need to be addressed,” Chris said. “Our agency has grown significantly since starting with WordStream, by an average of 20-30% per month, and we've added three new employees since we started just three short months ago!”

Chris was most excited to share the metrics that WordStream Advisor has helped deliver. “Our conversions are up by over 400%, our CPA is down by 32%, and our revenue is up over 40%!”

The other plus according to Chris: “The lead quality is fantastic!”

The Next Frontier: Going Cross-Platform

So, what’s next for 98 Buck Social?

If you can’t tell already, Chris is not the type to just relax when things are going well. So, what’s next? I’ll let Chris tell you…

“With such great results, we have confidently doubled our AdWords budget in just 60 days. We have also integrated our Facebook advertising into the platform and have matched our AdWords spend to that now as well,” he said. “Lastly, since we've loved how great WordStream has been in integrating and optimizing our digital advertising spends and lead cultivation, we have ventured into Bing ads recently as well.”

Clearly, their team does not plan to slow down anytime soon, and we’re just happy that WordStream Advisor is able to help fuel their amazing growth!

Margot Whitney

Margot is a content marketing specialist at WordStream and nutrition graduate student at Framingham State. She loves all things digital, learning about nutrition, running, traveling, and cooking.